You're Not Late With Your 2026 Marketing Plan

Start With These 5 Decisions

If you are looking at 2026 and thinking, “We really should get our act together on marketing”, you are not alone.

Most SME teams are busy delivering, reacting to short-term demands and keeping clients happy. Annual planning ends up being a rush in January, a slide deck full of ideas, and a silent hope that it will somehow turn into results.

It does not have to work that way.

When I plan a year with clients, I do not start with campaigns, channels or content. I start with a handful of decisions that shape everything else.

Here are the five decisions that give your 2026 marketing plan a clear spine, without needing a 40-page strategy document.

Decision 1: What does “a win” look like by December 2026?

Most marketing plans fall over because they start in the wrong place.

They begin with a long list of activities:

• Post more on LinkedIn

• Refresh the website

• Do more events

• “Raise awareness”

None of that tells your team what success is meant to look like.

Instead, start with three business outcomes. By December 2026, what must be true for this year to have been worth the effort?

For example:

1. Grown revenue from existing customers by 20%

2. Won 5 new contracts over £X in a priority sector

3. Shifted 30% of sales to a higher-margin offer

That is it. Three outcomes.

Then, at the top of your plan, write:

“In 2026, marketing exists to:

1. …

2. …

3. …”

Every idea, campaign, channel and “great opportunity” gets checked against those three lines. If it does not support at least one of them, it either waits or disappears.

This is how you stop the plan turning into a to-do list for “more marketing” and make it a tool for business growth.

Decision 2: What genuinely worked in 2025?

The next temptation is to jump straight to new ideas for 2026.

Before you do that, take a calm, honest look at 2025. Not vibes. Not anecdotes from one noisy deal. Numbers.

Start with a simple review:

• Where did your best leads come from? Website, referrals, LinkedIn, events, email, something else?

• Which leads turned into real revenue? Not downloads, not enquiries that went nowhere. Invoices.

• What content or campaigns led to actual sales conversations? The pieces that made prospects reply, book a call or ask for a proposal.

Once you have that on the table, decide together:

• What do we double?

• What do we stop completely?

• What do we simplify?

Most SMEs do not need more channels in 2026. They need a smaller number of routes that they commit to and run properly.

A one-page “what worked / what did not” review will serve you far better than another brainstorm of ideas no one has capacity to deliver.

Decision 3: What is your primary growth engine?

Here is a question I often ask leadership teams:

“If we could only use one main route to win new business next year, what would it be?”

The answer is your primary growth engine.

It might be:

• Expert content on LinkedIn as the engine, email nurture as support

• Speaking and events as the engine, LinkedIn as support

• Partnerships and referrals as the engine, simple email plus landing pages as support

You can, of course, use more than one route in reality. The point of the question is to force focus.

Trying to scale three growth engines at once with a small team is how everything ends up half finished. People feel busy, the calendar is full, but the pipeline is inconsistent and no one can clearly explain where new work is meant to come from.

Choosing a primary growth engine does three things:

1. It clarifies where most of your effort goes.

2. It gives your team a clear story for how marketing and sales fit together.

3. It makes it easier to say “no” to distractions that do not fit your main route.

   
   

Once you have your engine, you can design campaigns, themes and content around it, instead of bolting activity on in all directions.

Decision 4: How will you use AI on purpose in 2026?

By the time we get to the end of 2026, the gap will be obvious:

On one side, teams that have built AI calmly into how they work. On the other, teams still dabbling in tools when they have a spare five minutes.

You do not need to become an AI lab. You do not need a separate AI strategy document.

You do need three clear agreements.

1. Where AI saves time

Be specific:

• First drafts of blogs, emails, social posts and landing pages

• Turning a webinar recording into a set of shorter content pieces

• Drafting proposals or frameworks from your own notes and examples

If you can cut content production time by, say, 30% without losing quality, that reclaimed time can move into better planning, smarter campaigns and more customer conversations.

2. Where AI improves quality

AI can also help you think more clearly, not only work faster.

For example:

• Turning messy meeting notes into a crisp ideal customer profile

•Generating several versions of a key message for different decision makers

• Structuring complex ideas into a clear framework or outline

Used well, this helps your team communicate in a way that is easier for clients to understand and act on.

3. Where AI is not allowed

Boundaries matter.

Decide upfront where AI has no place, for example:

• Final pricing decisions

• Creating or altering case studies and credentials

• Anything involving sensitive client data, unless you have a secure, compliant setup

Write these down. Share them with the team. This is how you keep trust with clients and avoid awkward surprises.

Finally, put AI into the plan in a measurable way. For example:

“In 2026 we will reduce content production time by 30% using AI, and reinvest that time into better campaigns and more customer conversations.”

Now AI is not a side project. It is part of how you hit your outcomes and how you report on progress.

Decision 5: What will you actually deliver in the first 90 days?

This is the point where many plans quietly fail.

The thinking is solid. The presentation looks neat. Everyone nods. Then day-to-day work takes over and the plan gathers dust by February.

To avoid that, translate your 2026 plan into a concrete 90-day action list.

Think of it as: “What would a normal, capable human need to see in order to start next week?”

Work through five areas:

• Assets: What do we need to build first? A new lead magnet, a landing page, a webinar, a core slide deck, a set of updated case studies?

• Campaigns: What is the first theme we will take to market, and what is the “hero” asset for it?

• Stop list: What do we stop on 1 January to create capacity? Old newsletters, low-value events, channels that never produce leads?

• AI workflows: Which two or three processes will we redesign with AI support immediately? For example, blog production, client proposal drafting, social content repurposing.

• Metrics: Which numbers do we track from month one, who owns them, and how often do we review them together?

When the first 90 days are clear, your team can move straight from theory to action. You can then repeat this cycle every quarter, informed by what you have learned.

Bringing it together

Once these five decisions are made, the rest of your 2026 plan becomes easier.

You can:

• Add 3–4 campaign themes for the year, instead of 20 disconnected ideas

• Plan a “bravery project” that stretches the business in a meaningful way

• Schedule simple monthly and quarterly reviews that keep you honest

You move from “we should probably do more marketing” to “we know what success looks like, where growth will come from, and what we are doing in the next 90 days to move towards it.”

What to do next

If you have not finalised your 2026 marketing plan yet, start with these steps:

1. Write down your three business outcomes for 2026.

2. Circle your primary growth engine and one supporting channel.

3. List three things you will stop doing next year.

4. Describe, in one paragraph, how AI will help your marketing team work smarter, not only faster.

5. Turn that into a simple 90-day action list: assets, campaigns, AI workflows, metrics.

If you would like support to work through these decisions with your leadership team, this is exactly the kind of structured planning I offer as a fractional Head of Marketing and AI trainer.

You can use this article as an agenda for your own internal session. And if you would like an external view, a bit of challenge and a calm pair of hands to bring it together, get in touch and we can explore whether a 90-day planning sprint would help your team step into 2026 with clarity and confidence.